Institute H21

If you want to increase people's trust in democracy and encourage their active participation in public decision-making, you have a really big goal. It has been an extraordinary experience for us to work with the H21 Institute to achieve it. The algorithm of the Czech mathematician Karel Janeček, the founder of IH21, is the brilliant iceberg floating beneath the surface of this voting platform.

The voting part is the basis of the platform. Users can vote on given options by different methods. However, the system lacks the functionality of suggesting options, candidates, opinions, etc., all depending on the specific voting project.

area

Politics

client

Institute H21

system

Web

Extensibility

The original electoral platform no longer allowed for expansion. At the turn of 2018 and 2019, IH21 concluded that the platform needed to be changed. The next steps led to a team made up of representatives from Qest and IH21 to develop a new system.

IH21 required a very flexible platform that allows them to create voting projects so that their client can build their own project completely according to their needs and ideas.

"The challenge of this project is that we are developing a completely flexible system. If I, as a client, have a requirement to add a new component to the site, it won't be a problem. The platform will be ready for these possibilities."

Anna Kratochvílová, Product Owner

Analysis & Scrum

First, Qest proceeded to analyse the old and new platforms. After a thorough analysis of existing functionalities and new requirements, we developed a solution proposal. With the start of the project, an agile scrum methodology was introduced in the development team and also in the Qest-IH21 collaboration.

Solution

The platform is implemented for projects such as participatory budgeting for school cities, social games like President21 or Brexit. It will be possible to vote on anything. The user will be able to create their own project page and add all the necessary features to it.

The application will be built on the Google Compute Engine (GCE) or Infrastructure as a Service+ model. This choice marked the premiere with GCE for Qest. However, the system will be designed with microservices that can be further developed according to the client's needs.

Map and Admin

The design part is newly included. Its solution has a version with and without map. The version with a map will allow marking the place of the proposal in the participatory budgeting and the approved proposals will go to the voting section. A major benefit will be the Admin section. In it, IH21 clients will build the entire project based on their own requirements within the platform's functionalities.

Further development: flexible platform

Qest has been involved in the development of this ultra-flexible platform for the future. As part of this work, the team is focusing on the needs of a specific project for NYC - Participatory Budgeting.

Experience: different voting methods

For the International Symposium on Democracy in the 21st Century: Challenges and New Horizons organised by IH21 in September 2019, Qest implemented a results page. This time it was a comparison question chosen by two methods. The aim was to demonstrate the advantages of the D21 method compared to the one-vote method. The poll was created specifically for this event and was also conducted directly at the event. The actual technical implementation was then on the "intermediate platform".

Technologies

Frontend

TypeScript, React.js, Next.js

Backend:

Node.js

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